


The God Who Controls the Wind

by Tigerine (sealink)



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 10:12:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sealink/pseuds/Tigerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tori goes back into Oval Tower for Mink.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The God Who Controls the Wind

Death smells like gypsum, like concrete and bent rebar. It is not the smell that Mink knows. It’s not the smell of woodsmoke and charred flesh and gunpowder. It’s not like the smell of Aoba either, of void and ozone and petrichor.

It has a sound, too. A sound like explosions and a motorcycle.

He’s alive. He knows it even before he pushes himself up on one arm and pain shoots through his body. He shakes the ceiling tiles off his shoulders and glass out of his hair.

_Got that bastard though. I got him. I finally got him._

_We got him._

_We._

Mink’s eyes look heavenward, to the night skies. The dark silhouette of Oval Tower’s remains curve over him like ribs and he feels a moment of peace inside the carcass. Small next to the shaking steel beams, Mink is an infant in a cradle of metal bones, Oval Tower his mother killed by birthing pains.

His fingers itch. His skin crawls.

_Where is the knife? Need the knife. Do this properly. Finish this journey and begin the next._

The roar of an engine and the screech of tires. Mink turns.

Tori.

“You’re alive.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Mink says, his voice raspy.

“You do seem to have a knack for surviving,” Tori replies, killing the engine. “What will you do now?”

Mink doesn’t reply. He’s got to find the knife.

 “You haven’t even asked about Aoba.”

Mink pauses, the name plucking his heartstrings like a harp. _Aoba_.

“If you’re here, he must have made it out.”

“That’s more trusting than you’d usually be.”

“If I can’t trust my Allmate, I can’t trust anything,” Mink manages, getting to his feet. His left shoulder is dislocated, but his right hand is as good as his left; he’ll manage. His blood throbs in anticipation. Did the knife get buried in the wreckage?  He turns over a slab of floor, pulls aside a chunk of concrete.

“What are you looking for?”

“The knife.”

“You’re still going to do _that_.”

“Yes, Tori,” Mink replies wearily.

“How dishonorable.”

Mink turns and glares at the motorbike. “What could you possibly know about honor?”

“Only what I have learned from you.”

Mink scowls, walking over to Tori. “I haven’t taught you anything like that.” Mink leans against the bike, wincing at his shoulder.

“That’s bullshit,” Tori says calmly.

“I could turn you off right here.”

“You won’t. Even you don’t want to be completely alone when you die.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”  Tori pauses, the hum of the bike’s computer seeming loud in the rubble. “None of your people were alone when they died, as long as you still lived.”

Mink lets out a long sigh, looking down at the seat of the bike and the displayed AI screen on the console. The generated LED image regards him plainly, honestly.  Mink finally grunts and then nods. “Thank you, Tori.”

“Of course.”

“See the knife anywhere?”

“No.”

Mink’s chin drops down against his prisoner’s collar, the metal cold against his skin.

“You wouldn’t be able to kill yourself now anyway,” Tori says.

Mink turns to look at the screen. “Oh?”

“Your pipe,” Tori explains. “And Aoba.”

The pipe. Mink reaches into his coat pocket, fearing the worst, and he’s relieved to see that the fragile antique is unharmed. His fingers slide up the stem, darkened by decades of use, by his father before him and his grandfather before then. He’d always intended to return it to the place where his ancestors lay in death, sleeping, waiting. Would he really fail to do so now? The smell of smoke lingers around the bowl; Mink lifts it to his nose, breathing deep.

“You wouldn’t rob him of the chance to do the same, would you?”

Mink turns to look at Tori, one eyebrow lifted. “The same?”

“You have crimes to answer for, the same as Toue.”

“I am nothing like Toue,” Mink snarls.

“Aren’t you?”

Mink stands up off the bike, seething. “I am—nothing—nothing like…”

“You dragged an innocent kid into this,” Tori says.

“He’s not a child—“

“An _innocent_ —“

“We made a deal!”

“And who got the better end of that deal?” Tori’s voice is cool, mechanical; dismissive of Mink’s arguments.

Mink’s shoulder is throbbing.  A piece of the tower above him shifts and then crashes to the ground. In the cloud of dust thrown up by the collapse, Mink hears a metallic clang.

“You owe it to him.”

“I don’t owe him anything. Our business is concluded.”  _That was the knife, right? Wasn’t it?_ Mink turns in the direction of the sound, his boots sliding in the grit.

“Your business is, but not his.”

_Where is it? Where did the knife go?_

“Toue waited for you, didn’t he?”

Tori’s words ring out in the hollow space of the tower’s innards.  Mink stands up from where he bent over searching for the knife.

“Will you die and deny Aoba his revenge, like a coward? Will you die here and leave your sacred tools as nothing more than litter in Platinum Jail?”

Mink turns and walks numbly over to the bike. A great wind surges across Midorijima. It howls through the upright steel beams and they sing and whine and screech. The gale sweeps lingering clouds of dust out of the air, clearing the room and Mink’s view of the stars above. The powder and ash blow out to sea in eddies and whirls, out to the east, to meet the rising of the sun on the other side of the world.

With a long last look at the wreckage, Mink slides one leg over the bike, placing his injured arm in his lap with a hiss of breath.

“No,” Mink says, his voice thick with pain. “No, I won’t.”

Tori doesn’t say anything, but the motor of the bike roars to life.


End file.
